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Today, a group of journalists will gather in Toronto and debate who should be named Canada’s best athlete of 2016. The front-runner for the Lou Marsh Trophy is Penny Oleksiak, the 16-year-old swimming superstar who won four Olympic medals in Rio, the most of any Canadian at a single Summer Games.

Barring a drastic turn of events, Oleksiak will win the award (announcement is at 1:30 p.m. ET). But here at The Athletic, we compiled a list of other possible candidates, and among them, were Andre De Grasse, sprinter and three-time Olympic medallist and Milos Raonic, the third-ranked tennis player in the world.

Along with Oleksiak, what De Grasse and Raonic have in common is that each call Toronto — or at least the surrounding area — home. After his family immigrated from Montenegro, Raonic honed his serve in Thornhill, Ont. De Grasse hails from Markham, Ont. And Oleksiak lives in Toronto’s east end, attending high school at Monarch Park Collegiate Institute, because, remember, she is 16.

The reason we bring this up is because there seems to be a seismic shift around here lately. In the debate for Canada’s greatest athlete, at least three top contenders are from the Toronto area. And then there’s the professional teams. The Raptors are legitimately a top team in the NBA. The Blue Jays finished as American League finalists two years in a row. The Leafs, well, they have a plan — andthey are fun now. And Toronto FC, this city's much-maligned Major League Soccer franchise, just hosted the championship game (and lost, but baby steps, folks).

Lately, there has been a radical change in these parts. It is, at last, a good time to be a Toronto sports fan — which is good news for us.

As our editor-in-chief James Mirtle put it last week, here at The Athletic, “We want to do things differently and tell stories others are not.” If you, the fans, are already engaged with the teams — and hometown athletes — we hope that means you’re all the more eager to dig into the stories we tell.

Our newsletter will help with that.

If you sign up today, you will start to receive our newsletter regularly — we hope daily, but we are only human, after all. The newsletter will help keep you in the loop about the latest Toronto sports news and highlight our day’s best stories to ensure you never miss out on what our site has to offer.

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Kaitlyn McGrath is the associate editor for The Athletic. Previously, she worked at the National Post and CBC. She was born and raised in Toronto, and graduated with a MA in journalism from Western University. Follow Kaitlyn on Twitter @kaitlyncmcgrath. If you liked this story, subscribe today for access to all of our ad-free content. Plans start at just $3.33 per month.